This morning, we began discussing time. We started by talking about all of the things we know that take about an hour. Some answers included: swimming lessons, watching a movie, grocery shopping, etc.
After this, children were told that today we will be learning about telling time to the hour. The students attention was drawn to the classroom analogue clock. We talked about what we noticed about the clock, mentioning the numbers around the clock face, the differences between the hands on the clock and what we know about telling time. We addressed that an analog clock shows the time by the positions of the hands. We discussed how digital cocks have no hands. We identified the hour hand and the minute hand, discussing the everyday meaning of hand, as well as its meaning in this context. We noticed that the hour hand is shorter and the minute hand is longer. The hour hand also moves more slowly than the minute hand. Today we focused on the hour hand. Looking at the analog clock, we compared the hours on a clock to chapters in a familiar book. When reading Chapter 1, you are still in Chapter 1 even as you get closer to Chapter 2. The last page of Chapter 1 is still in Chapter 1, even though you are only one page from Chapter 2. Similarly, even when the hour hand is close to 2 o'clock, it is still moving through the 1 o'clock hour until it reaches 2 o'clock. Using our demonstration clock, we moved the hour hand around several more times, stopping at various on-the-hour positions, letting children call out the times. After this, students used a colored pencil or marker to color the section of the clock that is part of that hour, changing colors for each number, then working with a partner, asking them what the hour was at different intervals.
Today, we began our research for our end of unit project. Students are working in three groups; blizzards, tornadoes, and hurricanes. They will be working together to find information about how their extreme weather is formed, how to stay safe in it, what it is, and other facts.
They will use their research to write weather reports. We will be filming these weather reports next week against our green screen. This is one of my favourite educational technology projects we will be doing in first grade. I will be asking you to send some weather related clothing in with your child next week, in order to make this more believable. I am hoping that I can invite parents in on Friday afternoon to view a screening of our finished weather reports. I will keep you posted on the process.
You may have noticed some words appearing on the wall outside of Mrs. Amanda's classroom. These words are our IB learner profile attributes.
At the heart of the IB is the “learner profile”, a long- term, holistic vision of education that underpins all three programmes and puts the student at the centre of everything we do. The learner profile is the IB mission statement translated into a set of learning outcomes for the 21st century. The ten aspirational qualities of the learner profile inspire and motivate the work of teachers, students and schools, providing a statement of the aims and values of the IB and a definition of what we mean by “international-mindedness”. The learner profile unites us all with a common focus: on the whole person, as a lifelong learner. It applies to us all – student, teacher, parent or administrator – for we are all continually learning. I will be addressing these learner profile attributes more thoroughly over the next month as we lead up to our IB visit. The PYP students are also working on painting a mural. I am a firm believer in the importance of these attributes and character education for every child. Please let me know if you have any questions about the IB PYP programme. I have also posted some info below for you to familiarize yourself with.
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In the PYP, it is believed that education must be extend beyond the intellectual to include not only socially responsible attitudes but also thoughtful action. An expectation of the PYP is that successful inquiry will lead to responsible action, initiated by the students as a result of the learning process. Actions extend the student's learning, or often have a wider social impact. Actions show our little learners what they can do with their newfound knowledge to change the world. My role as the teacher, is to encourage action and to create opportunities for action. This is done through asking questions: What could you/ we do? And making the questions specific for the unit of inquiry that we are are studying at that moment. There, Student initiated action should be seen as a voluntary demonstration of a student's empowerment in the context of the expectations laid down in the programme. The action can be a service in the wider sense of the word: service to fellow students, and to the larger community, both in and outside the school. During this unit of inquiry on weather, we learned about the power of the sun and solar energy. We learned about how some communities rely on solar ovens to cook their food and boil water. As a result of this discussion, and questions like “what can we do,” the students decided that we can use our solar oven (and our electric ovens at home) to bake cupcakes, and sell our cupcakes in order to buy solar ovens for communities that need them. Today we sold our cupcakes and made over 415,000 AR that's enough to buy 8 solar ovens! Thank you so much to all of the families who made contributions. I am so proud of our little ones for taking on this task to help the needy in local communities across Madagascar. I have asked the ADES to send photos of people enjoying their ovens as they are delivered, so that students can see the impact of thier action. This morning, we learned how to make butter-cream frosting to ice our cupcakes that we made in the solar oven. We made pink icing, and used sprinkles and chocolate chips to decorate them before selling. After selling all of our delicious cupcakes, we had to count the money we earned. We began by sorting the different notes, and then using our skip counting skills to count by 2s, 5s, and 10s. There is no such thing as a day without math in this class! After counting our money, our hearts were so full from being able to help others. We talked about all of the wonderful qualities that each one of us has. We then defined what a compliment is. Next, we went to our own desks to start writing on our own Compli-Mats. First stop, compliment yourself. We talked about how important loving yourself is. So, we asked our children to write something about themselves that they really like. This gave us a quick assessment to see that they understand compliments before they began. Next, we went to each other's desks, providing compliments to everyone in the class. Like one big valentine. Teaching our primary students about compliments is highly important in our classroom. Sometimes it seems easier to point out what we don't ilke...But, we have found that we have to purposefully teach our first graders how to see the good in one another by pointing out what they do like. After that, students sat with a partner and read all of their compliments. This gave me all the feels <3. Read through your child's compliments with them at home tonight, asking them which is their favourite and why. Finally, we began to talk about our own hearts, and what they are full of. We brainstormed things and people we love, and talked about what is important to us. Students cut out a great big heart, and began to draw and label things that their heart is full of. We will finish this task tomorrow. Can you feel the love today?
Last week, we finished up unit 5 of our Everyday Math program. We reviewed: adding and subtracting within 20, working with addition and subtraction equations, understanding place value, and measuring lengths. Today, we completed our mid-year assessment. This test has been sent home to be signed, and then must be returned to go in your child's portfolio. If you have any questions about this assessment, please come see me. I am confident that our little learners did their best, but I also know that test scores do not reflect the whole story, or all of your little one's knowledge and understanding. I am well aware that there are great test takers, and lousy test takers. Know that I use ongoing assessment methods to get the full picture of your child's understanding. While I encourage you to go over this test with your child, please don't stress them out if their scores 'aren't good enough.' All of your children should be proud of their learning, and should not feel like they have let you or themselves down. That puts too much weight on their little shoulders. With that in mind, I am very happy with how each of them preformed. I have attached the home letter below for our next math unit that we will begin tomorrow. During Language Arts, we focused on the ow/ou sounds as well as the oi/oy sounds. Over the next month, we will be heavily focusing on phonics. For many children, practising the ability to recognize sounds in words can make a big difference in how fast they learn to read. These spelling patterns will also assist your little ones in their writing. As a great deal of my training lies in phonics, and reading instruction, I will be working closely on this skill heavily before I leave. There will be a stronger writing focus after I leave, and I have prepared amazing writing lessons for Mrs. Wendy to deliver that I am so excited about! Last week, our fabulous student teacher Frances taught us all about precipitation and the water cycle. Students began this unit by looking at different books about rain, sleet, hail, and show, and asked questions about what they wanted to learn about. They also sang songs and watched videos about the water cycle learning the words 'evaporation,' 'condensation,' and 'precipitation.' We used our knowledge about what the word cycle meant from our last unit of inquiry on life cycles, and our inquiry cycle board. The next day, we learned about evaporation by doing two hands on experiments. First, we made a puddle outside, and drew a line around it using chalk. We left to do our next experiment, and when we came back, the water was gone. We learned that the sun evaporated it, and brought it up in the air to form clouds as condensation. Next, we filled a try and a cup with the same amount of water, food colouring and salt. We put them outside for the day. We learned that the water evaporated from the tray much quicker because it was less condensed. We also noticed that the salt stayed in the tray, because it is not a liquid. Later in the week, we formed clouds using a bag of ice, and boiling water. We learned how steam rises, turns into a cloud when it gets cold, and then precipitates. It was neat to see the whole process. We also played a variety of water cycle games, and even put the water cycle into our own words Today, we learned about how clouds can hold many water droplets. Students hypothesized about how many drops they thought a tiny cloud could hold, and then took turns using pipettes to add drops and count them. We learned that clouds can hold many drops before releasing them as precipitation. After all this excitement about rain, we prepped up our solar oven once more, and began to bake cupcakes for tomorrow's bake sale. We popped them in our solar oven, and they are now ready to ice and decorate tomorrow. We will be selling them to raise funds to purchase solar ovens for communities in Madagascar who need them. We also learned about print advertisements and what they should include. In groups, our little learners created posters to put around campus to advertise our sale tomorrow. I also want to thank Melinda Manning (Elizabeth's Mom) for coming in to read us two super cute stories last Friday afternoon. Parents, if you are ever interested in reading, teaching, or learning with us, please reach out and let me know how you would like to participate. |
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March 2017
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